Game
Rock Beyond Time
4 years ago

About the upcoming expansion- coming this week, hopefully


First off, why am I doing an expansion?

  • ...because I felt that the game, good as it was, hadn't reached its full potential. There were a lot of mechanics in this game, and I didn't use them all. This included making a dungeon that used keys, a quest that seriously used the time travel mechanic for the gameplay, utilizing certain rings in specific ways, and a bonus boss.

So, what's in the expansion?

  • An NPC looking for someone generous to help you plant... something. You'll have to complete the Flour sidequest before you can help them.

  • A bunch of places to plant... something.

  • A new dungeon with new puzzles, a couple of new monsters, some keys, and where you can actually travel through time inside.

  • A new boss fight. (No Stat boost for it, though. I have to keep the game balanced.)

  • Bug fixes, because I kept noticing them as I kept working on this.

  • A convenient surprise for players who try to beat this in a single run without reloading the save file. (...though with any luck, the game shouldn't crash by that time.)

When is the expansion coming?

  • Before the 27th. There's a Splatfest coming up, and I don't wanna miss it. ...assuming nothing goes wrong.

What is NOT in this expansion that I would've liked to be in this game?

  • A higher-quality soundtrack with vocal lyrics

  • A reward/punishment for min-maxing

  • Sega CD-quality animation sequences

  • A roguelike mode

  • A translation into other languages

  • Sound effects that won't land me in copyright trouble if I decide to sell this game.

That being said, the features mentioned above (besides the min-maxing bit) seem like things I want to do if I want to make a special retail version of the game. ...except maybe the translation. That's something to do whenever I can, with the upcoming build I'll have. I don't want to make people pay a premium just so people can play this in Brazilian Portugese. What I really need is a chart on how to insert actual foreign, non-Roman-based characters into my text, and Game Maker's help docs ain't helpin'.

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I probably should continue work on the final boss, but I wanted to show you what else I've been working on with this game.

Title menus are really important for home releases, and Game Overs are for less casual gamers.

Almost there...

Thankfully, the fingers can be flipped around for the opposite direction.

Part of the expansion involves a cute little fight right here. ...in space for no apparent reason.

...too bad it won't be as epic as the final boss, but still...

There. Another hand angle. It shouldn't have taken me this long, but this isn't my day job.

If I know what I'm doing, I can flip most of that hand, easily.

Behold, blending vertex positions!

Old position + ((number between 0 and 1) * the difference between the old and new position)

This took so much math, it hurts. ...not the CPU, but it sure hurts me to do.

...and I've got four more angles to do this with.

The hands have now been drawn.

Now, I'd better program something that does the math for me to do that polygon-blending trick.

I want to do a magic trick that can morph the polygons from one position to the next. I'm doing the keyframes first, then I'll make them automatically do in-betweens with math.

Drawing fingers in perspective is hard, but it'll be worth the effort.

He's coming back. ...but just this once.

It doesn't matter if you're drawing in pixels, by hand, or with polygons. Hands are hard to draw, period.

Meow.

Tigers are difficult to animate, especially since they have two joints for their hind legs.

Well, it kinda resembles a tiger.